FORT BELVOIR, Va., Oct. 17, 2008 -- Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) and the Army Knowledge Online/Defense Knowledge Online (AKO/DKO) Program Office recently achieved a major milestone with the one-billionth logon to the AKO/DKO portal. AKO/DKO is a partnership between Northrop Grumman and the U.S. Army providing a single enterprise service portal, serving as the entry point for all U.S. Department of Defense and authorized users to access Defense Department and government intranets supporting operations, missions and critical support processes for forces worldwide.

Hitting that mark on Sept. 29, 2008 was Chief Warrant Officer 3 Jon Cahill, a senior maintenance technician with the 116th Brigade Combat Team of the Idaho National Guard. With 26 years of active and guard service, Cahill has seen first-hand how the Internet has changed the way the Army gets business done.

"When I first joined the Army, everything was done by written correspondence through the U.S. Postal Service and you always needed carbon paper for duplication," said Cahill. "AKO provides us with unlimited access to enormous amounts of information and creates the ability for immediate authorization to perform our duties."

Factoring into the meteoric rise from 61,000 users in June 2000, to more than two-million today, was the joining of forces between AKO and the Defense Information Systems Agency's Net-Centric Enterprise Services unit to create a portal that is the preferred source of information among the services within the Defense Department. More than 10 years of proven success and continual improvements factored heavily into the decision to make AKO the baseline technology for DKO, which is a related site tailored specifically for the wider DoD audience that includes all branches of the armed services.

"For more than a decade, AKO has provided a secure, scalable single point of entry for DoD net-centric enterprise services -- making it the logical choice as DKO's foundation," said Lt. Col. Ken Fritzsche, the Chief Operations Officer for AKO. "Working together as AKO/DKO strengthens our position and improves our ability to help the warfighter communicate and collaborate."

"As we approach the holiday season, the most important thing we can provide our warfighter is the ability to communicate in real time with their loved ones back home, and AKO/DKO affords them this opportunity via chat functions and email instant messaging available to all members of the extended Defense Department community," said Tom Shelman, president of Northrop Grumman IT's Defense group. "Achieving our one-billionth logon is testament to the high-level of service and mission-critical knowledge sharing the portal is providing, which is merely a stepping stone for other great offerings and service we will continue to provide in support of the warfighter and the nation."

"During this period of tight fiscal resources our user base continues to grow because AKO makes sense; it eliminates the need for units and organizations, especially those deployed to remote locations, to purchase and maintain e-mail and file storage servers and applications," said Fritzsche. "We do the back-end work for them, while also providing the functionality they need -- instant messaging, unit-specific Web pages, interactive forums, document management, a fully functional wiki. All they have to do is log on."

Northrop Grumman Corporation is a global defense and technology company whose 120,000 employees provide innovative systems, products, and solutions in information and services, electronics, aerospace and shipbuilding to government and commercial customers worldwide.